At night when the streets of your cities and villages
are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning
hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The white man
will never be alone.(1)

As the first Native Americans encountered by Europeans in
1492, the Taino of the Caribbean vanished as a people more than a century before
Chief Seattle's eloquent pronouncement. Yet his words could not have struck
any closer to Taino beliefs concerning death for the Taino believed that the
dead could take any number of shapes that made them indistinguishable from living
people.

This research paper is an attempt to understand the Taino
view of death in what scholar Sam Gill would call "the terms by which the
people themselves understand the character of reality."(2) That is, this
paper explores the connections between life and death in the Taino religion
and attempts to re-construct this important element of the Taino worldview from
what is known about Taino religion and culture.

This paper presents a selection of historical, archeological,
linguistic and ethnographic information collected about the Taino that directly
or indirectly reflects Taino ideas about death and its relationship with life.
Because the Taino did not differentiate between their religious beliefs and
the way they organized their society, it becomes necessary to cast a wide net
across several different areas of Taino life in order to get a fuller picture
of their sense of what death was about. To separate themes examined based on
whether modern readers consider them "religious" versus "social"
is an artificial division imposed by the modern Euro-American academic paradigm.
Thus the sections below are structured around themes but do not adhere to strict
separations between themes, between aspects of Taino life, or for that matter,
between academic disciplines.(3)

Following this introduction, section 2 of this paper is
devoted to a brief explanation of the historical and geographical context of
the Taino, as well as an overview of the sources and methods employed in this
study. Section 3 is a discussion of explicit Taino beliefs about death while
section 4 focuses on rituals and practices. References to death in Taino Mythology
are presented in section 5 while section 6 examines how death is reflected in
the Taino healing arts. Finally, a brief conclusion follows in section 7.

2. Historical Context

Taino Background

The Taino people were the first Native American group encountered
by Columbus in 1492 and certainly the most populous group in the West Indies
at the time. They inhabited the Bahamian Islands and all of the Greater Antilles
(i.e., Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica).(4) While the earliest observers
estimated Taino populations in the millions across the Caribbean, modern scholars
estimate much lower numbers peaking at a maximum of 500,000 in Hispaniola and
smaller numbers in Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Cuba and the Bahamas.(5)

The Taino were predominantly the descendants of the Saladoid
people who moved into the Lesser Antilles and Puerto Rico from the Orinoco drainage
and river systems of the northeast coast of South America around 500 to 250
B.C.E.(6) These Saladoid ancestors brought ceramics and agriculture to the Caribbean
as well as a religion based on zemies.(7)

By 1000 C.E., the distinct new group now known as Taino
had moved into Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Cuba. Their population expanded considerably
and they had developed "political systems in which many villages were united
under the leadership of a single person or family."(8) This study focuses
on these Tainos who flourished between 1000 C.E. and the arrival of Columbus
in 1492.

Much has been written about the various groups of Taino:
the more agriculturally advanced "Classic Tainos" of Hispaniola and
Puerto Rico, the more peaceful "Western Tainos" of the Bahamas, Cuba
and Jamaica, and the more hostile "Eastern Tainos" of the Lesser Antilles.(9)
Scholars have found differences among them in pottery, agricultural sophistication,
linguistics, and inclination towards war. As the best sources available performed
most of their observations in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, the "Classic
Taino" are often the focus of research as they are in this paper. That
said, some scholars are comfortable generalizing findings to other Taino groups
"based on the Spanish assertion that all Tainos had similar cultural practices."(10)
In areas where these types of generalizations are definitely not applicable,
the sections below call attention to this.

As Gill observes, "Native American views of reality
are not static structures."(11) The Taino were no exception to this. Just
as in the case of other Indigenous groups, the Taino people were undergoing
their own processes of change, development, and adaption during the period under
study. If this type of variety and cultural vitality does not come through in
this study, it is not because it was not there. Rather, it is more indicative
of the difficulties in examining an entire community of ideas, beliefs, stories,
and ways of living that no longer exist from the distance of centuries and not
reducing them to mere shiny points on the historical horizon.

Sources and Methods

While there are accounts of autonomous Tainos living in
Cuba as late as the end of the 17th century, Taino life (as lived in pre-conquest,
self-governing communities) came to an end much earlier.(12) The significant time
that has elapsed since then presents the principal difficulty in researching
Taino religion, and transforms what would otherwise be exclusively a question
of ethnography or anthropology into research that relies primarily on historical
and archaeological evidence.

The primary historical record of Taino myths and beliefs
is Pané's An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians. Written in Spanish
and completed around the end of 1498, this short manuscript is essentially Pané's
notes on Taino religious culture, recorded over the course of several years
living amongst the Taino people of Hispaniola.(13) Unfortunately, Pané's
original manuscript and a complete Spanish language copy of it extracted by
Fernando Colon disappeared centuries ago.(14) Not much was written about Taino
religion until Yale scholar José Juan Arrom re-constructed Pané's
text in 1974, using an Italian translation of Fernando Colon's biography and
references to Pané in other Spanish and Latin works of the time.(15) Arrom
drew from linguistics research in related Arawak languages to restore many of
the original Taino terms and decipher their meanings.(16) This reconstruction
of Pané's text is the primary source used by modern scholars of Taino
religion today.

There are also several other texts by fifteenth century
Europeans discussing their observations of Taino religious life.(17) One problem
with all of these sources (including Pané) is the biased nature of the
information they convey.(18) One strategy employed in this paper to lessen the
effects of European biases is the use of examples and explanations of symbols
from within the Taino context and/or the context of related Amerindian peoples.
Another strategy is the discipline of separating descriptions and narratives
from judgments based on values in these accounts.(19) The latter is easier to
do with Pané, who under orders of Columbus to "discover and understand
of the beliefs and idolatries of the Indians," presents possibly the most
unbiased of these primary sources.(20)

Finally, there are several contemporary scholars who have
validated many of the widely accepted theories about the Taino through archeology,
linguistics and comparative mythology.(21) This study relies on the secondary
sources generated by these modern scholars and the aforementioned strategies
to distill as much Taino reality as possible from the Eurocentric accounts of
the early observers.

3. Taino Beliefs About Human Death

The Land of the Dead

The Taino told Pané that the dead went to a place
called Coaybay.(22) The name Coaybay has been translated by Arrom as house and
dwelling place of the dead or abode of the absent ones.(23) Coaybay was located
on one side of an island called Soraya, which Martius translates as sunset and
Arrom translates as "remote, inaccessible, unreal place."(24)

Regardless of which of the translations for Soraya is used,
there is a line or boundary drawn around Coaybay by the characterization of
it as located on one "side" of the island. It is possible that the
language of "sides" was the way in which the Taino envisioned some
level of separation between the world of the dead and the world of the living.
Further evidence of this separation is the reference to Maquetaurie Guayaba
as the lord of Coaybay.(25) That is, Coaybay is portrayed as a separate place
with a separate leader.

Characteristics of the Dead

The Taino believed that both the living and the dead had
a spirit. For the dead, this spirit was called op’a.(26) The op’a
were believed to hide away during the day and come out at night to eat guayaba
(guava fruit). The op’a were known to attempt to seduce living people
and op’a women were said to vanish into thin air when living men tried
to put their arms around them.(27) In addition, the op’a came out at night
to "celebrate and accompany the living."(28)

The op’a could transform themselves into many shapes.
They could take the form of fruit or appear disguised as living relatives of
the person to whom they appeared.(29) That is, the op’a could take any number
of shapes that made them indistinguishable from living people.

Yet the Taino did convey to Pané some differences
between the op’a and the spirits of the living or the goeiza. One significant
distinction is found in the translation of the term goeiza as "our face,
our countenance."(30) Arrom believes this was the way Tainos expressed the
uniqueness and individuality of living spirits.(31) That is, the term goeiza may
be expressing the Taino idea that the living had definite form while the dead
(i.e., op’a) were mutable and changeable.

Furthermore, the Taino told Pané that there was one
way to tell apart the op’a from the living and that was by looking for
the person's navel. The Taino believed the dead have no navels.(32) This interest
in navels is especially meaningful if one considers that the navel is the point
at which newborns are attached to their mothers. In light of the matrilineal
descent customs of the Taino,(33) the navel or physical link to the mother also
determined a person's place in the community or society.

Thus op’a were spirits without faces and navels. They
were spirits that lacked both a unique individual identity and a place within
the Taino community derived from the mother's line of descent. As Alexander
has observed, "the navel is the symbol of birth and of attachment of the
body to its life."(34) Having no navel would imply that the op’a were
not born to this life, not grounded in particular human experiences. This association
of the op’a with freedom is further reinforced by the symbols of flight
associated with the op’a discussed in the next section.

Symbols of the Dead

The Bat

The spirits of the dead, the op’a, were thought to
come out at night and feed themselves on guayaba (guava fruit). As Stevens-Arroyo
points out, nocturnal consumption of guayaba is primarily attributed to tropical
bats, which spend their days hidden in caves.(35) This similarity, along with
the frequency of bat motifs in Taino art, has led scholars to investigate possible
associations between death and the symbol of the bat in Taino religious culture.
As Garcia Arevalo has observed,

In many examples of Taino art, skull-like images alluding
to death dramatically fuse with images of bats (Chiropterae) and owls (Strigidae),
animals of nocturnal habits and sinister appearance that are associated with
the opias ...(36)

Garcia Arevalo has also noted that some Taino bat figures
feature a central hole that he interprets as symbolic of the lack of navels
on the op’a.(37) All of this evidence has led Stevens-Arroyo to suggest
that the Taino may have "believed the form opia assumed during the day
was that of sleeping bats."(38) Both of these scholars identify bats and
owls as symbols of the zemi Maquetaurie Guayaba (see section 3.1 above) and
of the "realm of the dead."(39)

However, this conclusion is not unanimous among scholars
of Taino culture. Petitjean Roget believes that bats in Taino art symbolize
men and dryness in opposition to frog motifs that symbolize women and wetness.(40)
While it is true that this hypothesis matches the tropical seasons, there is
little archaeological, mythological, or historical evidence to support Roget's
theory that these motifs were paired in such tandems. Thus it appears that the
archeological evidence better supports the interpretation shared by Garcia Arevalo
and Stevens-Arroyo. This interpretation also appears to fit better with the
Taino myths discussed in section 5 below.

Finally, it is important to consider that bats are flying
mammals. If the Taino did associate the bat with death, they chose a curious
animal that both mimics humans in early life (i.e. bats nurse one offspring
at a time) and demonstrates the distinctly non-human ability to rise up in flight.
The latter is consistent with Taino notions of the op’a as beings that
are not bound or tied to this life in the same way as the living goeiza.

The Owl

As already noted, Garcia Arevalo also believes that the
owl was equally a symbol of death for the Taino. He bases this on the observation
that "owl eyes outlined on many archaeological objects resemble the empty
eye sockets on human skulls."(41) Arrom finds circumstantial support for
this connection in Caribbean and South American folk tales still in circulation
that perpetuate the belief that the call of an owl heralds the end of a human
life.(42) However, the latter is not that easily traced to Taino or Amerindian
religious culture because the same belief about owls is also found in European
folklore.(43) Thus it is possible that the folk tales about owls and death that
still circulate around Latin America came from the European colonizers and not
the Native Americans.

Arrom also connects owls to death in Taino mythology by
noting similarities between geometric designs found on stylized owl motifs and
a skull-like head that he has identified as the lord of the dead, Maquetaurie
Guayaba.(44) It is true that all of these figures have some form of geometric
designs that might be related but the degree of correspondence on these is very
difficult to judge from the photos available.(45) The evidence for the connection
between owls and death in Taino religious culture is suggestive but inconclusive.

Contrasts Between Taino and European Beliefs About the Dead

In her structural analysis of Pané's manuscript, Lopez-Baralt
has found that the chapters of Pané's work with the highest numbers of
editorial comments, changes of voice, and evaluative statements are the two
chapters related to Taino beliefs about the dead.(46) Lopez-Baralt goes on to
speculate that this probably indicates the degree of discomfort that Pané
felt with Taino notions of a joyous, happy afterlife for infidels or non-Christians.(47)
Whether or not this was the case, Lopez-Baralt's finding indicates, at the very
least, a change in Pané's handling of the Taino material.

This change may have been an expression of discomfort or
it may have just been the natural reaction of a person trying to understand
a radically different worldview than his own. As Arrom summarizes,

For the Taino, from what we have seen, death was not extinction,
punishment or reward. It was an episode in the transition from one existence
to the other, an event expected and anticipated in the natural cosmic order
... The dead were not in heaven or hell, or with the creator. They were on one
side of the island, waiting for the sun to go down to come out and eat guayaba,
have sex, celebrate and dance.(48)

The differences between Taino perceptions of death and European
Christian ideas are also evident in the choice of many Taino to commit suicide
instead of serve as slaves in the Spanish encomiendas.(49) Finally, this difference
also explains Taino chief Hatuey's decision against converting to Christianity
before his execution. While the narrative of Las Casas about this episode emphasizes
that Hatuey chose hell over heaven in order to avoid seeing his Christian tormentors
in the afterlife, it seems more likely that Hatuey saw the choice as one between
the Christian afterlife and his people's Coaybay.(50)

4. Rituals & Practices

Rituals at the Beginning of Life

Very little is known about Taino traditions surrounding
the birth of a child. A lesser known, secondary source from the 1920's writes
that Taino births were marked by ceremony but there are no footnotes to indicate
from which primary source this information was derived.(51) Without details about
this aspect of Taino religious culture, it is difficult to draw any conclusions
about how birth rituals might have expressed Taino concepts of life and death.

Rituals and Practices Related to Death

Taino Burials

Much of what is known about Taino burials comes from archeological
data. There is archeological evidence that dead Tainos were buried in the ground
or interred in caves.(52) Taino caves were often painted or decorated with images
of spirits (i.e., petroglyphs) but scholars have not really found concrete connections
between these images and Taino beliefs.(53)

Much of the recent archeological research has focused on
the burial practices of the Saladoids or ancestors of the Taino. For example,
archaeologists have found that the Saladoid buried their skeletons facing East,
towards the rising sun.(54) One reason the Saladoid sites have been more widely
studied is that the Saladoid sites are much bigger. The Saladoids buried their
dead communally, in central, public spaces such as ball courts and areas where
community dances were held.(55) In contrast, the Taino of Puerto Rico, had begun
to bury their dead individually in domestic areas, "either under the house
floor or in associated trash middens."(56) Curet and Oliver feel that this
shift is evidence of "the increasing preeminence attained by individual
household units at the expense of larger kinship groups."(57)

Siegel interprets this shift as indicative of the shift
in Taino ideology from an egalitarian ethic to a model of hierarchical domination.(58)
The latter is consistent with archeological evidence that higher-ranking people
in Taino society were buried with their prized possessions.(59)

In terms of historical data, there are multiple corroborating
accounts of a high-ranking Taino cacique (chief) in Hispaniola who was buried
with a living wife.(60) However, this type of consistency in the historical record
is the exception rather than the rule. Examined together, "the brief descriptions
provided by the chroniclers are somewhat confusing, incomplete, and in some
cases contradictory."(61) Thus most scholars subscribe to the conclusion
that the mortuary practices of the Taino differed from island to island.(62)

The aforementioned problems limit any scholar's ability
to completely examine all of the mortuary practices associated with the Taino.
However, two of these practices that appear to be more closely related to Taino
concepts of life and death are examined in more detail in the two sections below.

Zemies from the Dead

When caciques were not buried after death, there is evidence
to suggest that their bones were used as zemies and that the cacique's spirit
came to be regarded as a zemi.(63) The bones, particularly the skull, were converted
into zemies "by sewing a cotton figure over the skeletal framework, or
they would be preserved in reliquary urns."(64)

Alternatively, they were converted into zemies by a process
of drying. Christopher Columbus reported that some of the skulls of important
ancestors were placed in baskets that he observed hanging from the roofs of
the bigger houses within Taino communities.(65)

Regardless of how they were created, it appears that some
zemies were believed to be direct ancestors or recently deceased.(66) As one chronicler
quoted by Stevens-Arroyo wrote, "'they say that the spirit of the dead
one speaks through these, and forewarns them of the designs of their enemies.'
"(67) From this, it appears that the Taino associated some dead ancestors
with superhuman powers and that is why these people were worshipped as zemies.

Finally, Deren claims that the Taino association of zemies
with dead spirits moving around in the world of the living survives in modern
times in the concept of the zombie in contemporary Haitian Voodoo.(68)

Endocannibalism

As Oliver describes it, the Taino practiced endocannibalism
or "a ceremony during which the powerful spiritual essence of a deceased
person is passed along to the living in a beverage made with his or her ground
and burned bones, which all the participants drink."(69) Oliver adds that
this practice continues today among Indians of South America who view bones
as "the source of life itself."(70)

It is not clear what type of evidence Oliver uses to confirm
that the Taino practiced ritual endocannibalism but even assuming this was the
case, the practice would indicate that the Taino associated death with the regeneration
of life. As Oliver uses Taino myths to confirm this belief, we now turn towards
analyzing the mythological evidence.

5. Death in Taino Mythology

Opiyelguobiran, "Our Spirit of the Darkness"

The zemi or deity called Opiyelguobiran is introduced in
Chapter XXII of Pané's manuscript as a four-legged creature "like
a dog."(71) Arrom's analysis of his name teases out the words op’a
(already defined as spirit of the dead) and guobirán, which is a combination
of shorter words that in Arawak means "our spirit of the darkness."(72)
The Taino told Pané that Opiyelguobiran had a tendency to escape into
the jungle at night and they had tried to tie him up with a rope so that he
would not leave but this did not work.(73) The Taino also told Pané that
this zemi had disappeared again when the Christians arrived on Hispaniola. They
had followed his tracks to the edge of a lagoon but they were unable to recover
him and they never heard from him again.(74)

As Opiyelguobiran was described with canine language and
he was associated with the spirits of the dead and the darkness, there have
been parallels drawn between this zemi and the Greek Cerberus, the guardian
dog of the underworld.(75) However, there is nothing in the historical record
of Taino religion that suggests a belief that Opiyelguobiran guarded the entry
to Coaybay.

Furthermore, Opiyelguobiran was not mentioned in connection
with Maquetaurie Guayaba (lord of the dead) or Coaybay (dwelling place of the
dead). Instead, the Taino told Pané that this spirit was in the possession
or under the control of a cacique named Sabananiobabo.(76) The latter seems to
represent a live cacique who Pané describes as a preeminent man with "many
subjects under his command."(77) The name Sabananiobabo itself has been translated
by Arrom as "savannah of the jobos," or savannah of the hog plum trees.(78)

Noting the prominence of hog plum trees in one of the Taino
etiological myths (discussed below), Oliver contrasts the sourness of this fruit
with the sweetness of the guava, already connected to the spirits of the dead.
Oliver incorporates this into a Levi-Strauss inspired structural analysis that
yields the conclusion that the Taino associated the world of the dead with sweetness,
the world of the living with sourness, and the zemi Opiyelguobiran with the
lagoon between these two worlds.(79) While this is an interesting application
of structural theory, there is little support for such a model in Taino beliefs
about the dead as described to Pané (see section 3 above).

That said, Oliver's work does contribute an interesting
observation from the myth of Opiyelguobiran. This is the realization that the
zemi Opiyelguobiran, associated with the spirits of the dead, was compared to
a dog, the only domesticated animal the Taino possessed.(80) Perhaps this indicates
that the Taino believed that dogs also had a spirit. This hypothesis is even
more likely if Garcia Arevalo is correct in his hypothesis that "some animals
were thought to be tribal ancestors, and their strong sense of kinship allowed
them to partake, to some extent, of the human condition."(81)

The myth of the zemi Opiyelguobiran seems to raise more
questions than answers. Because this zemi does not get mentioned at all in conjunction
with the general beliefs about the dead reported by Pané in chapters XII
and XIII of his manuscript (see Section 3 above), it is possible this zemi was
a relatively new deity or a local, clan spirit whose story was not part of the
common religious culture of larger Taino groupings. The latter would certainly
be supported by the plural possessive "our" prefix found in Opiyelguobiran's
name ("Our Spirit of Darkness").

Death and The Divine Midwife

Atabey (or Attabeira) was considered the central goddess
figure of Taino religion. She was described as the mother of Yocahu, the god
that lives in heaven and has no male ancestor.(82) At least two European chroniclers
of the early 16th century indicate that this "mother of God" deity
was honored in an important yearly festival.(83)

The zemies that Arrom associates with Atabey are all made
from white bone or white shell that resembles bone.(84) These zemies are molded
in the form of a woman giving birth. Arrom hypothesizes that these were the
zemies that were invoked by Taino women for assistance with childbirth.(85) The
construction of zemies to assist in childbirth from the remains of the dead
(or from white shell that resembles bones) might indicate that the Taino perceived
of death as a process closely related to the creation of new life.

There are other connections between the zemies used for
childbirth and the healing of diseases that may shed some light on Taino ideas
about death. The discussion of these is deferred to the section on shamanism
below (section 6).

In conclusion, the apparent association of the goddess associated
with childbirth with bones of the dead may be interpreted as evidence that the
Taino understood the role of death in birth, fertility and the re-creation of
life.

The Presence of Death in Taino Etiological Myths

The Creation of
the Oceans

Chapters IX and X of Pané's document are devoted to
the Taino myth that explains the creation of the oceans. In this myth, Yaya
(or "supreme spirit") kills his son Yayael and places the bones in
a gourd, which is hung on the roof over Yaya's house. Later, desiring to see
his son, Yaya tells his wife (who is never named in the myth) that he wants
to see Yayael and it is the wife who takes down the gourd and turns it over.
At this point, the bones have become many large and small fish, which Yaya and
his wife decide to eat.(86)

Thus ends the first part of this myth, where according to
Oliver "the emptying of the gourd/uterus by the unnamed woman is a metaphor
for birthing."(87)
Whether or not this is the case, this part of the myth shows how the bones of
the dead Yayael are treated the way Columbus described the Taino making zemies
out of the bones of their ancestors (see section above). In addition, the dead
bones of Yayael have become live fish in this myth fragment, and ultimately,
these bones end up providing life-sustaining nourishment for Yayael's parents.
Thus this part of the myth demonstrates Taino beliefs in the direct dependency
of life on death.

In the second or alternative form of the myth,(88) Yaya goes
to the fields and leaves the gourd with Yayael's bones hanging from the roof.
Shortly after, four brothers arrive at Yaya's house. These four brothers are
considered quadruplets, "all from one womb and identical."(89) The myth
says they were taken out by a type of "caesarean section" from their
dead mother, Itiba Cahubaba,(90) who died in the process of childbirth. The brothers
begin to eat the fish in the gourd until they hear Yaya approaching. In haste,
they try to hang the gourd back but are not able to secure it. The gourd falls
to the earth where it breaks and lets out enough water and fish to create the
earth's oceans.(91)

With the introduction of Itiba and her four sons, the myth
now appears to utilize a combination of metaphors for expressing processes of
creation: the birth of new life as childbirth (in the emptying of the gourd
and in Itiba's labor yielding four sons) and new life arising from death (fish
created from the bones of the dead Yayael and live children born from the dead
Itiba Cahubaba). The complex inter-play of these two ideas supports the hypothesis
that the Taino saw death as a pre-cursor to birth, fertility and the re-creation
of life already discussed in the section on Atabey's zemies (see section above).

The Origin of the
Taino People of Hispaniola

The Taino people of Hispaniola told Pané that they
had originally emerged from the mountain cave called Cacibajagua ("Cave
of the Jagua").(92) According to Pané's narrative, in the beginning
all of the people were inside the dark cave. At night, various people came out,
but as they were late returning to the cave at dawn, they were "captured"
by the sun and transformed into various other forms. The man who served as watchman
was turned into stone, some men that had gone fishing were turned into hog plum
trees, and one man was turned into a bird that sings in the morning.(93)

As the spirit of the dead or op’a hid from the sunlight
by only coming out at night, were known for their ability to change into flora
and fauna, and were associated with guava eating bats who lived in caves, a
number of scholars have made the connection between the op’a and the mythic
ancestors of the Taino people of Hispaniola that dwelt in the Cave of the Jagua.(94)
This connection presents a number of interesting possibilities with respect
to Taino ideas about death.

For example, this association takes the hypothesis of the
dependency of life on death a step further by allowing for the possibility that
the Taino may have believed in some form of re-incarnation. A belief in re-incarnation
would be consistent with Taino ideas that the living people were the ones with
navels (i.e. signs of concrete human birth) and faces (i.e. definite form and
identity) while the op’a were those without faces or navels, or possibly
those that had not been re-born yet.(95)

Given that these associations come from a myth that explains
the emergence of the Taino people as a group, it appears that if they believed
in some type of re-incarnation, it was not really focused on individual op’a.(96)
Rather, the Taino may have been suggesting that it was possible for a large
group of op’a to bring forth a new generation of people, plants, and animals
through special processes of creation.

These special processes of creation bear close resemblance
to human childbirth upon closer inspection. For example, the Cave of the Jagua
as a representation of the collective womb is supported by the reference to
the jagua, a fruit that produces black dye used by the Taino people to color
their bodies.(97) The cave or cavity is in a mountain, which is not unlike the
shape of a pregnant woman's belly. When one considers that newborn children
come out of their mother's womb and belly covered in the darkest of blood, the
image of the Taino people covered in jagua emerging from a cave located within
a mountain may be viewed as a Taino expression of origin based on the language
of birth from a woman's womb.

If the op’a or spirits of the dead were believed to
take the form of cave-dwelling mammals (bats), perhaps this was the Taino way
of expressing that these spirits were gestating in nature's womb until it was
time for them to be born again and re-gain their navels. At birth, the op’a
would gain not only navels but individual identities (or faces), which is also
how the Taino characterized the spirits of the living or the goeiza.

Whether the re-birth paradigm fits or not, the strong connections
established between the op’a or spirit of the dead and the mythic ancestors
of the Taino people are difficult to dismiss. These connections argue for at
least the conclusion that death and new life were inexorably linked in the Taino
worldview.

6. Death and the Taino Shaman

Zemies from the Sick

The Taino shamans cured the sick by contacting powerful
zemies through the use of cohoba powder, a strong hallucinogen made from the
seeds of Anadenanthera peregrina or Piptadenia peregrina trees.(98) As Alegria
notes, "often the shaman would produce a stone or an amulet and pretend
to suck it from the patient's body, claiming that it had been the source of
the illness and should thereafter be saved as a magical charm of protection."(99)
That the same object that was thought to take health and vitality away from
a person was also considered to be a powerful prophylactic suggests that the
Taino may have viewed vitality and disease, or life and death, as two sides
of the same coin.

Furthermore, Pané writes that these stone zemies taken
out of the sick bodies were also believed to be "the best ones to make
pregnant women give birth."(100) This application of zemies removed from
the sick is supported by the writings of Benzoni, another European observer,
who added that the women kept these zemies from the sick as sacred objects.(101)
Regardless of who kept these objects, the fact that they were considered sources
of good health and particularly useful in helping women give birth is another
indication that the Taino may have felt there was a strong interdependent relationship
between the powers that gave new life and the powers that took life in the form
of diseases.

The Shaman as a Figure of Mortality and Fecundity

Taino shamans used a number of instruments in their healing
practice. These included stone pestles to prepare the cohoba, vomiting sticks
used for ritual purification, vessels to store the cohoba, and forked tubes
used to inhale the cohoba.(102) As Garcia Arevalo has observed, many of these
objects are decorated with bat and owl motifs, probable symbols of death for
the Taino.(103)

There are also effigy vessels and other Taino artifacts
that represent images of Taino shamans. These are almost always "deathly
figures" that are "emaciated to the point of skeletonization."(104)
Yet as Roe points out, these figures typically possess fully erect phalluses.(105)
Roe adds that this is just one of many examples from the "New World,"
where "the iconography of mortality was linked to images of fecundity."(106)
In the context of this study, this is yet another example suggestive of the
belief that the way to life and health went right through death.

7. Conclusion

This study has examined general Taino beliefs about death,
mortuary practices, and death in relation to the Taino shaman and associated
healing arts. In addition, references to death in Taino mythology and religion
were also discussed. From all of these areas, the picture of death as inseparable
from life emerges fairly clearly in many examples.

With respect to Taino beliefs about the dead, the close
tie between life and death is reflected in their description of the spirits
of the dead as nearly identical to the spirits of the living with two important
distinctions. The spirits of the dead did not have navels and they seem to not
have had faces. These two beliefs indicate that the spirits of the dead had
no individual identity and no specific ties to clan and community. The spirits
of the dead were simultaneously associated with the guava-eating tropical bats
that spent their days inside caves and with the ability to transform into fruit.

In terms of Taino mortuary practices, there is great variety.
Even so, the best documented practices, such as the construction of zemies from
bones of the dead, exhibit a close inter-dependency between the powers that
give life and the powers that take it away. A similar pattern emerges from the
practices, instruments, and symbols associated with the Taino shaman.

Taino myths in general, and etiological myths in particular,
are full of references to the important roles played by death and decay in the
processes of creation at the cosmic and personal level. The latter is evident
in the utilization of zemies, constructed from the bones of the dead or produced
from healing the sick, as sacred objects that assist women in childbirth. In
terms of Taino myths of origin, death is portrayed as a vital, necessary process
that creates the oceans, the fish, and the original Taino shamans.(107)

As discussed in the section above entitled "The Origin
of the Taino People of Hispaniola," the Taino myth about the origin of
the people of Hispaniola has led scholars to hypothesize that the Taino associated
the mythic ancestors that eventually emerged from the Cave of the Jagua with
the spirits of the dead or the op’a. It is possible that this represents
Taino ideas about the re-generation of life. Stevens-Arroyo believes these ideas
might have easily developed from close observation of the Taino tropical environment.
Using what the Taino told Pané about the spirits of the dead appearing
as fruit, Stevens-Arroyo elaborates this hypothesis as follows:

When fruit falls to the ground, is it dying as it decays
or is the seed inside beginning the process of gestation towards a new tree?
The Tainos were surrounded by such paradoxes. Rapid decay in their tropic ecology
was handmaiden to an equally rapid gestation. Such perceptions must have led
to questions on the nature of life and death.(108)

From all of the evidence examined, it appears that the Taino
did not see birth and death in linear, historical terms as two end-points of
a life segment. At the very least, it may be said that the Taino connected death
with re-birth so that the life and death aspects of their worldview were always
connected in loops. Perhaps these loops are the concentric trapezoid shapes
pictured on the back of zemies identified as Itiba Cahubaba, the dying mother
of the four sons who created the ocean.

The Taino had not developed geometry as we know it, but
they seem to have expressed something of a cosmic geometry in their concepts
of life and death. Having no mathematical language with which to express cycles
in time and recursive interactions between multi-dimensional forces, the Taino
described their "road of life"(109) using Tropical fauna and flora.
Thus the bat ate the guava fruit and then turned into a fruit.

As Marija
Gimbutas and other archaeologists have noted, it is impossible to study
extinct religions and/or societies without the ability to patch information
together from different academic disciplines.

The one exception
was Cubas western tip (Pinar del Rio) that belonged to another group
that was markedly less developed. See Irving Rouse, The Tainos: Rise and
Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1992), 5.

Samuel L.
Wilson, "Introduction to the Study of the Indigenous People of the
Caribbean," The Indigenous People of the Caribbean, ed. Samuel M. Wilson
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997), 5.

In this context, the word zemies refers
to the carved stone or shell pieces that were worshipped as religious icons
by both the Saladoid and Taino. Wilson, 5. More generally, the term zemies
(singular zemi) was also used by the Taino to refer to spirits or deities.
See Rouse, 13. That is, the Taino did not separate the icon from the spirit
it embodied.

William F.
Keegan, "No Man [or Woman] Is an Island: Elements of Taino
Social Organization," The Indigenous People of the Caribbean, ed. Samuel
M. Wilson (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997), 113.

The Spanish
language texts are Bartolome de las Casas Apologetic History of the
Indies and excerpts from the writings of Cristopher Columbus. The Latin
text is Pietro Martire dAnguieras Decades of the New World.
Ibid.

That is, the information was recorded by
pre-enlightenment, non-scholars writing even before anthropology was a discipline
much less one based on the scientific method. "The intolerance and
religious prejudice of these writers’ era is evident in their distrust
and lack of sympathy. And this bias means that even though their descriptions
are extremely valuable documents, it is difficult to reconstruct a clear
understanding of Taino religious beliefs from them alone." Miguel Rodríguez,
"Religious Beliefs of the Saladoid People," The Indigenous People
of the Caribbean, ed. Samuel M. Wilson (Gainesville: University Press of
Florida, 1997), 80.

In this sense, the elapsed time is an advantage
because it gives modern scholars more distance from these early observers.
As time passes, it lowers the probability that a modern scholar will suffer
from the same bias and the same blindness to the bias as the European observer
of the 15th century.

Rouse, 158. The encomiendas were a "system
of forced labor whereby entire Taino villages were assigned to Spaniards
under the direction of their chiefs; they worked for six to eight months,
then returned to their own homes and tended their crops for the rest of
the year." Rouse, 178.

From Pané,
3-4. While the "heavenly" language used to describe Yocahu by
Pané sounds questionably Christian, the general consensus from Taino
scholars is that there did exist a central, male high god in Taino mythology.

Arrom’s closest translation of Itiba’s
name suggests she is the bloody old one, "weighed down with years."
Arrom also identifies Itiba as an earth mother figure, similar to Pachamama
and Coatlicue for the Aymara and the Aztecs. See Arrom’s extensive
explanation of this in Pané, 13-14 (footnote 56).

While an emphasis on the individual is
suggested by the individualized burials that the Taino had begun to practice
(see section above), the myth may have developed during the Saladoid days
when the people had been buried communally in central, public sites.

In a later
part of the myth described in the section above, the four brothers (sons of
Itiba Cahubaba) inadvertently discover the practices of the Taino shaman
much the same way they helped create the oceans. See Pané, 15-16.

Sam Gill defines
this concept as follows: "The cycle of human life, the journey from
birth to death, is brought into line with cosmology by being depicted as
a process of movement within the landscape. Life is a road one travels."
Gill, 83.